Yeah, and if you

look at the landscape in Michigan, I mean, Michigan is a state that has been hit hardest by the Trump tariffs.

I think the tariff burden in Michigan is over $5,000 a household.

So this is a place that was, you know, a swing state that Trump won just, you know, two years ago.

But this is where Trump's policies have, you know, bled out of Washington and are really hitting home.

And so if you if you are paying, if you can imagine a five thousand, this is on average five thousand dollar burden per household in Michigan, suddenly it becomes quite, you know, it opens the door for a Democrat, even a Democrat who's You know, views are outside of the mainstream.

I mean, in these other cases, we're talking about...

going to Alaska.

And what was that process like? And how has it been over the past two years? Shall we say more people have perhaps seen things the way your story laid it out?

Yeah, thanks.

It's great to be here.

My story with my colleague, Siobhan Hughes, we worked together for four months in 2024 to try to get inside what it was like to be with Joe Biden behind closed doors.

And we started this reporting really instantly after the Her report came out.

I remember reading that report yesterday.

Every single page of it.

How would you say the mood is within the White House right now regarding the midterms? How clear-eyed are they about the challenges in front of them?

Annie, which companies are most exposed here?

Certainly companies like Meta, Amazon, Google are companies that have been very eager to show how close they are to Trump, and that has painted a target on them.

The other category is companies that have a strong tie to Trump or his family members, but also to some of his aides.

These are companies that have added Don Jr. to their board of directors.

These are companies that have had big investments from Steve Witkoff's family or from the Lutnick children.

Now, it's unclear, of course, what Democrats will do if they take the House back, but those are places where there is some nervousness.

Is that a lot, or is this just what big companies are doing now?

What Meta's giving is pretty interesting.

Annie, what have you found?

Yeah, at the Wall Street Journal, we, um, took a, a deep dive to look at how exactly President Trump has managed to raise s- really sort of draw- jaw-dropping amounts of money, um, uh, checks that are this, y- eight-figure checks, so tens of millions of dollars from companies for, um, his projects that he's launched in DC, um, and also his political committees.

Um, and what we found is there's a very aggressive fundraising operation around that.

We, um, wrote a lot about his head fundraiser, Meredith O'Rourke, who, um, at his behest, will call companies and ask for $50 million checks, $25 million checks, um, to support, uh, various projects that the president is, um, i- i- is behind.

What do these folks get in return after making these massive donations?

Well, the thing about this White House, um, is the president has concentrated power in an unprecedented way in the Oval Office.

So, um, w- the Wall Street Journal has written extensively about how inde- agencies that were previously considered sort of independent agencies that would come to their own conclusions on really important regulatory matters that impact Wall Street, instead, that power is being centered in the White House, whether this is the FDA, whether it's the FTC, um, the Department of Justice.

A lot of those sorts of decisions that, um, really matter to companies, uh, is, I- in, in Trump's hands.

And a few other areas where it sounds like the US has made an announcement, but we haven't gotten confirmation of that from the Chinese side, for instance, buying more US oil.

Yes, that was something that the, a White House official and then later the president confirmed, that there are talks about the Chinese increasing their purchasing of US oil, as one White House official put it, to be less dependent on the Strait of Hormuz.

That sends a signal to Tehran that the Chinese are impatient with the closure of the strait and looking to put their money elsewhere.

Iran is a war that Trump had hoped to be settled before this summit, and in fact delayed the summit by about six weeks, believing that it would be finished by now, yet he came and landed in Beijing, and the strait remains closed.

So these two leaders did end up having some conversations about how to resolve that conflict, and President Trump summarized their conversation saying that the Chinese believe the strait should be opened, believe that the Iranians should not be tolling the strait, and that the Iranians should not have a nuclear weapon.

Now, we haven't heard yet from the Chinese side if that's how they see it.

Then what are the big takeaways from all of this?

These are the two leaders of the two largest and most powerful countries on the planet, and the kinda overarching purpose of these two days of meetings was to show the world that these two leaders can work together and have a working relationship even as the two countries are at times en- enmeshed in a rivalry that can get quite testy and tense and heated.

Right

... that the president was told, "This, this will shut down.

This s- strait will shut." And look, I mean, did the president order...

The president was aware that his belief could be inaccurate.

I mean, he, he didn't o- order the bombing purely thinking that, that the strait wouldn't close.

There was an awareness that the strait would close, but I think, um, the other part that was interesting is they, there, there wasn't as much of an awareness that the strait would close so fast, that, that boats would, um, be so easily coerced into not passing through because there wasn't some big battle for the Strait of Hormuz.

Um, you know, the Iran- the Iranians said, "We're gonna, we're gonna shoot do- we're gonna sink any boat that goes through," and companies said, "Okay, we w- we will stop sending our boats through." And so th- there was a disconnect there also with, um, people, uh, advising the president, people who are around, around the president.

Mm-hmm

So how much, I mean, how much is it the president just launching things and how much is it the national security team actually running the operation in the White House?

Yeah.

Those, those tweets, um, or I should say those Truth Social posts, um, that took so many people off guard, uh, who woke up and, and read them about ending a civilization, saying praise be to Allah, um, on Easter Sunday of all days, th- those were not tweets that he had even sort of chatted with his national security team about.

They r- they read them, uh, much the way we did, uh, after they were posted.

Um, the president did ask his staff about those tweets and said, "How, how are they playing? What ...

Am I being criticized?" And his c- staff said, "Yes, sir, you are.

You're, you're facing quite a bit of criticism for them." Um, some of his members of his national security team read them and saw ...

Trump may need to escalate further and actually to get this war to close if it can't be done at a negotiating table in Islamabad in the next couple of days.

So does this mean he can actually do that pivot thing that [chuckles] we keep waiting for?

And, uh, it was an interesting kind of confluence of events for Trump.

Um, the...

You know, if you kind of go back, this is really important when you look at this president.

I mean, he is a president who, um, you know, unlike sort of any other, at least in, in modern his- well, in the, in this century, let's say, um, who, who is just like very much it's like his personality embodies the presidency.

But much of what his administration does comes directly from him.

Not everything, but a lot of it really is coming, emanating r- directly from him.

Mm.

How does that work?

The story that we did details how the children of President Trump and also of Commerce Secretary Lutnick are both positioning themselves in different ways to benefit from policy changes that their parents are doing to the pharmaceutical industry.

President Trump, his son, Donald Trump Jr., is on the board of Blink Rx, and this company helps pharmaceutical companies set up direct-to-consumer sales.

Pharmaceutical companies are in the business of research and development, creating drugs, and they don't all sell directly to consumers.

But President Trump has been very clear that he wants that to change, and he wants these pharmaceutical companies to offer this ability.

And in comes Blink Rx, which is the company Donald Trump Jr. is on the board of.

They do that service, and they have been pitching it to various pharmaceutical companies.

What have the various stakeholders said about this?